The Bloodstains On Our Hands
by CimentSemantique
Summary: A look at the members of the League, as if we really needed more angst-drabble-fics about them. I am happier to finish this than I have been to finish anything else in the fairly recent past.
1. Mad

Dr. Henry Jekyll was depressed. Bad enough that he was in the presence of strangers (not enemies, not yet, not now), but there was that woman. There was Mina, the cold but fragile beauty. Mina, the chemist. Mina, the vampire. Mina, whose eyes seemed to look straight past his face and into his heart. Her eyes shone so beautifully, or acted as the abyss that looked back into him when he looked into the abyss.

Women were not his strong point.

Give him intellectual challenges, please. Give him an ailing child, a wounded soldier, and by God he could save them – his hands never trembled then. But present to him a lovely lady, and all surety was gone, all stability crumbled like London Bridge so many times.

It was this insecurity that brought on Hyde. Lacking the courage to go about things the right way, he was left to go about them the wrong way; lacking the courage to stop going about them the wrong way, he sought for the easy way out – the chemical formula to eradicate evil from human nature. And this chemical formula refused to even work completely – Jekyll retained his smatterings of Hyde mindset, and Hyde retained the ghost of Jekyll attitude. If it had worked, if he could have become truly two completely opposite sides of a coin, instead of a subtly interweaved tapestry, nothing would have come to this. The transfigured Jekyll would have had the willpower to destroy the profoundly, quintessentially evil Hyde. But as it was, Hyde could not help turning back to Jekyll because something inside his subconscious _wanted _to. And Jekyll could not destroy himself, and so Hyde, because some part of _his_ subconscious reveled in Hyde's actions.

And so there they were, locked together. Hyde continued his terrible way of life, and Jekyll continued to try to stop it. So many dead. Gabriel Utterson, where was he? He was still alive, wasn't he? He was alive when Jekyll-Hyde left London. But the others, dead, torn to pieces, abused means of proper society's disillusionment…

Jekyll shuddered.

* * *

_**Disclaimer:**__I don't own the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (though that'd be pretty kickass), be it the graphic novel or the book. The characters belong to their respective creators, though they're dead now anyway and can't really persecute me, and anyone who would try needs to stop taking credit for the work of others. I own the order of the words and a cute little laptop. Its name is Ash, named for Evil Bilbo from Alien. The title of the entire fanfiction is a slightly modified line from the songs "An Angel Falls" and "Never-Ending Night" by Arena, from the album Contagion.  
_

_**A/N:** __So, recently I saw "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (And today read the first volume of the graphic novel - trying to translate the Egyptian. Figures. I've only dealt with classical and Lebanese before, yay...) and, anyway, quite liked it. I mean, it's shaky at times and had all these little things that contradict the original cannon and piss me off, but it's not that big a deal because I'm a geek and very few other people are going to care. Anyway, after reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, I decided to scrawl this for poor, poor Jekyll_. _Reading forewords screws me up, man. I'll be writing for the rest of them, but it won't come as easily, as I haven't just read their stories..._


	2. Unquiet

Seven years ago, we all went through the flames. I alone remain.

First, there had been Lucy. Then had died Quincy. Then, the master – no, the foul beast. _The evil count_. Dracula. And later, as if his master—his _enemy_ had claimed too much of him to let him go, dear Jonathan. And I myself was damned for eternity, an unfortunate and unwilling child of the night.

Professor Van Helsing hadn't done anything. He was done his quest; Dracula was dead. His most sincere condolences he gave me, but he was an old man. Even if he had wished to stay, fortune would have none of it; by spring, he was found mysteriously dead. We didn't know, but he'd been dying for a long time.

And there I was. I had no husband. I had no master. I was new to the grey realm between life and death, and there was no-one to show me how to survive.

What's more, there was no-one to show me how to control myself.

Being a vampire is not complicated. Drink blood. Try to keep out of the sun. Avoid crosses and overzealous vampire hunters and the like. That's all very good and well, and in the end, common sense, really. But nothing warned me about the cravings. The urges. When a human is hungry, it is maddening, and it is painful. But a human is a weak creature with a slow metabolism. With a vampire, the hunger comes more quickly and more violently, and when it does, we are nothing more than animals.

If I still had my… my master, shall we say. I cannot pretend he was anything but, in the end. Oh, against my will and all that, but still, my master. If he had remained, if we had not killed him (I cringe when I think of the word. We._ I_ killed him.), would things be different? I would not, certainly, be in this mess with this menagerie.

Wouldn't I?

* * *

**_A/N_**_: Wow. I got a review for the first chapter. I must say I'm rather impressed. Anyway, darker dark side of Mina. Silly me. I'm mixing the original canon with the graphic novel. The movie's only barely on the side, which explains the complete lack of Dorian Gray (...I should get around to reading that, heheh.)_

_**Disclaimer**: Dracula was written by Bram Stoker, but unless he's writing about something he knows better than he lets on, he's dead. Alan Moore is responsible for LoEG graphic novel. Concrete Blonde wrote the song "Darkening of the Light," which is stuck in my head, and I don't remember who's responsible for "Underworld," but that's rather preoccupying me as well.  
_


	3. Mobilis in mobili

_"Nemo me impune lacessit"_

He was no man. He hadn't a name anymore, hadn't had one in so long. He hadn't nationality. India? France? The British Empire? What did it matter, when there, rolling and beautiful, her arms wide open, was the sea? He had no loyalty but to the sea, no love but her.

It had not always been so. He had had a wife, young and ravishing. He had had two children, who would have grown to be a pair of beautiful angels. He had been a prince. He had had a life. It escaped him, as it often had so many others, leaving him only a fraction of the man he once was.

Fueled by the fires of hatred and vindication, he had started a new life. His name, his rank, his old loves were all abandoned. _Tabula rasa_, almost, but not quite. He was Nemo; _no one_, in the Latin. _I give what is due_, in the Greek. He was the great nemesis, the hunter that lurked beneath the depths, from whom nothing could escape…

That life, too, he had given up on. How long could one keep on going, furious as he? After his encounter with Professor Aronnax, such a man to meet after so many years away from any form of society, he stopped to think. Where was this new life leading him? The ones responsible for his state of misery where probably dead, and even if they weren't, what could he make of it? And what was the point, anyway, of being indiscriminately cruel? On the mysterious island, one year later, he had attempted to take a kinder philosophy to heart. And there, on the island, he had faked his own death – no good to live with a crew that had seen him so vicious and mindlessly cruel. He'd found a new crew, and continued to explore the oceans. Years passed in this way, and he had to admit they were far more pleasant than before his reform.

Years more would have passed like this, had not Bond and M contacted him. Something about saving the world. His plan had been to refuse, of course. Humanity had rarely offered him anything; why should he offer back?

He had planned on refusing. But his wife's eyes followed him as he paced in his room, pleading, almost accusing. _Would you have more men like you were, my husband? Would you have more children like yours, dead and dying?_

And he knew, if he had ever loved them – and he had, he did, he always would – that he could not refuse.

* * *

_**Disclaimer:** Cap'n Nemo is a character created by Jules Verne. Alan Moore's responsible for the graphic novel and most of DC comics. So I can lay little claim to any of this. Yadda yadda yadda. I have a nice candle, though.  
_

_**A/N:** Inspiration, it hits! Yeah, I'm mixing movie with comic with book, oh well. I had tried to right for Quatermain first, but ran into a large wall and decided to right about someone else. As someone mentioned I should, here's Nemo's story. o_o I keep pulling the original books from my bookshelf and onto and around my desk. Let's see, the only one I don't have here right now is... The Invisible Man. But that's nowhere in the house. Grumble. (And, okay, fine. It's She and Allan. But it's close enough.) _ It's semifinals week starting tomorrow. Not sure how that's gonna work for updates, after I'm done with the AP semis I should be able to work on this without feeling guilty about putting off those fifty physics problems..._


	4. Confianza

I've been invisible for quite a long time now. I nicked the formula from cousin Hawley when he died, and have had slight issues reflecting light ever since. It comes in handy, sure, if I need to sneak into places. Women's boudoirs, for example. Jewelry shops. Very good for getting a great deal of things I want to get.

Except, of course, actual normal human relationships.

You know me. I'm forthright. Honest. Tactless. I'm a scoundrel, a thief, a libertine. Why would someone like me care about… about caring, feeling? Why would I want to be tied down? Am I not happy with the vagrant life I lead?

No. I do have a heart, you know, and every heart needs to be loved. Don't all start laughing at once! I'm not a malicious person, and there are some things I can't steal. I can watch all the pretty women I like pass by, without any hope of having any of them; I've nothing to offer in return.

I was offered a place in the League. I was offered a place where maybe, just maybe, I could belong. Like a schoolboy leaving a daisy for that girl down the street, I had the faintest glimmer of hope. Thievery is fun, granted, but there's only so much one can do – and when one is invisible, the 'only so much' becomes even less. Now I could put it to use. Now I could have my band of merry men, accepted and accepting.

Hah! They don't trust me. None of them trusts me. I'm an invisible, promiscuous thief. Why should they trust me? I'm self-absorbed and cowardly. How could they depend on me? When things go wrong, who'll get the blame? Grey, the beautiful, the gentleman? Nemo or one of his crewmen, still resentful of Britain? Jekyll, losing his temper? No. It's me they'll blame, send me out into the wilderness like the good little scapegoat I've been manipulated into being.

You think I don't know what's going on, with Grey, with our employer? You think I wouldn't follow 'em around? I'm an untrustworthy git, and as everyone knows, every untrustworthy git sees everyone else to be the same. But who would mistrust the pretty one, the one in charge, the one who didn't _really_ want to come along but decided to do so anyway, after some persuasion? I mean, with _me_ to point fingers at instead, really!

"They'll feel foolish, later," you might say. Of course. But what about _now_? I mean, seriously, what's my motivation, apart from the inherent goodness of my heart? Why can't I just say to hell with all of you, and find a nice place to settle down and not care anymore?

Oh right. I'm _invisible_. And I will stay invisible. There's no cure. What am I getting out of this? Nothing.

No one wants a thankless job.

* * *

**_A/N_**_: Finals and SAT are done with, hurrah! And I just saw Repo! the Genetic Opera last night (in which Anthony Head is, unsurprisingly, brilliant; Paris Hilton is, surprisingly, not that bad; and one of the bajillion producers tries to put on the entire show by himself, succeeding to a decent point), which I recommend to anyone who likes that sort of thing. But anyway, it means "Thankless Job" is stuck in my head. (...aaaand that tangent just died!) I'll also be writing for Griffin - something about juxtaposition or something._

_Explanation of "Cousin Hawley" (from Rodney Skinner's page on Wikipedia, which as we know never, ever lies):_

_[--_In the original graphic novel series of _League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_ by Alan Moore, the Invisible Man was given the name of Hawley Griffin, alluding to the name of a famous murderer, Hawley Crippen. Skinner was the maiden name of Crippen's mother._--]_

_Ta-dah._

_**Disclaimer**: I own nothing but the way the above 480 little words are ordered. The character Rodney Skinner was invented specially for LXG, the movie. I do not own or know the Psychotic Vampire Bat from Chernobyl the same actor played a couple years later, either, though that would be really very cool.  
_


	5. Look fair and feel foul

Woe to the man whose face reflects his soul

The world would be upon him all at once

This creature, like Endymion of old

Slips through the claws of the passing of months

His evil is not here for you to see

His sin and his age are hidden o'er there

And veiled are his cunning and his cru'lty

Behind his face, still so young and so fair

Oh, he has tried to be good and benign

He is corrupted by cynical aims

He willed all his rot to a painting fine

And there it decays, while here he remains

Murder and malice are hidden away

But with him the guilt and the mem'ries stay

* * *

_**A/N:** I'M ALIVE!! I am also wiped from my AP Lang exam, which, to be fair, was actually a walk in the park after the irritating Physics B and the utterly eviscerating BC Calc. I apologize for being gone for months; I have only weak defenses and one of them is writer's block. Hey, we're all writers here. I hope y'all can appreciate that. I spent a while (FOUR FRELLING MONTHS) trying to get Quatermain's to click, but it didn't. And suddenly came the inspiration to write an English sonnet for Dorian Grey; so I did, and thought it good. There it is._

**_Disclaimer: _**_I do not own the rights to Dorian Gray or any other characters I may have alluded to in this sonnet. The original story was written by Oscar Wilde, who is incredible and gorgeous and spoke French and wins the entire universe forever and ever amen. And if you, like many a student in my AP Language and Composition class, have never heard of the esteemed gentleman, I shall be inspired to hunt you down and gnaw on your limbs until the nice men in white coats lure me away with a copy of the Silmarillion. I don't own LXG either, be it the graphic novel or the mind-numbingly hackneyed movie. But my happiness depends less on you knowing the names of Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neil, Stephen Norrington, and James Robinson.  
_


	6. Lost

I have never been a very attractive man, and I am cold and callous. My greatest pride is my marksmanship.

Years I have sought to help the Empire. Rule Britannia, and all that. I have found King Solomon's mines. I have explored the continent of Africa, and I have found the most fantastic wonders. I have met the most beautiful woman that has ever lived, the one who never dies, but only changes…

I gave up on the empire. Somehow, I could no longer bring myself to serve it, though confounded if I knew why at the time. Perhaps I was simply tired. All my loves dead, my body aging, my eyesight failing… I hadn't anything left to live for.

It was then that I, like so many others, sought refuge in the delicious embrace of opium. No pain, no joy, no nothing; just me, the drug, and, on occasion, the cot on which I lay, though I was rarely that lucid. I thought my life was over; everything was done, all the adventures lived, the princesses saved, the tales told and swallowed into the culture. All was numb, and quiet. Gone were wars and lovers, and I shrouded myself in the thick Egyptian heat – neither seen nor known, as the French say. There I sat, or rather lay, quietly, in the same self-pitying hallucinatory circuit.

And then _she_ found me.

The day had started out all fine and dandy and wonderfully hazy. How many days or weeks had gone since I had last been sober I could not tell, and content was I in my ignorance. I was dreaming of Africa. I was dreaming of Ayesha. I was dreaming of – what, my dead son and wife, my gun, my own bloody navel. And then I heard the voice. The horrid, clear, cutting voice of that infuriating, hardheaded, irredeemably emancipated _woman_. And for some reason, she brought me back down into the hovel in which I had hidden myself. Or perhaps it was the adrenalin, I don't know. I must admit that the most part of that first encounter was a great incomprehensible blur.

The first thing I saw when I came to myself was, unfortunately, a monstrous-looking fish the size of my head.

The second thing I saw was that _(wonderful, beautiful) _bloody stubborn shrew.

And _then_ they drag me off on an utterly ridiculous adventure, to _Paris_, of all places. _My adventures were done_, god damn it all. But no, I did not lie to the captain. It's hard to stop, and I have no wish to fall apart again.

Besides, it would not be the first time I have been led on by the love of a pair of glittering jewels. This time, they are green.

* * *

_**Disclaimer:**__ Allan Quatermain is a self-insert character by Henry Rider Haggard. References to Willhemina Murray-Harker-Drakul-Hellsing-Whatsit, who was invented by Bram Stoker. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, and the movie belongs to... I think it belongs to Fox. _ Can't quite remember. I only have a DVD.  
_

_**A/N:** I can't help but notice that, as more time goes by since I originally saw the movie, the more these drabbles are comic-centric. (Speaking of time, I do apologize for the inordinate amount of it that has passed since my last update. I am a grimy denizen of the underworld unworthy of any and all possible mercy. But there is nothing anyone can do, I think, about my procrastination.) But anyway, there's Quatermain's story. D'you know it was the second one I started, after Jekyll's? =_= Aïe._


	7. Survival

_Bloody knitting circle._

And to think I was happy in that girls' school. Oh, happy? What an understatement. I was having a grand old time until those straight-laces came and dragged me out, bugger them. What is this? One washed-out, opium-addicted wreck; one scientist, like me, having made one of the greatest breakthroughs of all time, but lacking the spine to enjoy it; one lunatic Sikh; and one _woman_. A pretty woman, granted, but one incapable of accepting the simple fact that humans have urges. Or maybe she isn't human; maybe her encounter with that European changed something. Bloody Englishwomen, running off with the most unseemly sort, becoming _music teachers_… with the nerve to give me _orders_… I, Hawley Griffin, the diabolical genius, the only one with even half a brain and any semblance of balls in this pathetic operation.

But anyway, there it is. We kept Moriarty from taking over the world, though frankly I don't see how we're much better for it. Allow me to express my views on the matter, as if I hadn't made it explicitly clear on several previous occasions: I am god-emperor of my empire, and would like to be left well alone. Moriarty would have left me alone. Bloody Mister Bond and his minions won't. The bloody League is constantly on my case, bothering me with ridiculous things like morals, which any mature, intelligent human should understand need to be abandoned in order to survive sanely in this world.

And, naturally for a mature, intelligent human, I have done what is in the best interest of my survival; I have made a pact with the slimy alien worm-things, and frankly don't the see problems for the long run. _I live_. Ultimately, I think working with them is a less tiresome and better-paying job.

It is far more satisfying to be on the winning side.

* * *

_**Disclaimer:**__LXG and the works of HG Wells are no more mine than the sky or the moon or a nicely-equipped TARDIS, but a girl can dream.  
_

_**A/N:** __ABOUT GORRAM TIME. It's not as good as it could be, or as long, but Griffin is a surprisingly difficult character to write for, maybe because he's one-dimensionally self-serving. Dunno. Maybe he has subtleties and sensitivities that flew completely over my head, but he really comes across as hopelessly insane. I don't think I'll do Sawyer, mostly because he's a bland straight studio-spawned character._


End file.
